The Strategy of the United Front, by Rick Gunderman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_front
It’s a fairly self-explanatory term. The United Front is a strategy adopted by revolutionary socialist organizations as a means to both accomplish short-term goals alongside other non-revolutionary socialists, and to expose the non-revolutionary elements to the revolutionary cause. By working among the non-revolutionaries, revolutionary groups can hopefully win over at least some of them.
I personally give this strategy much currency when pondering revolutionary socialism. After all, I myself was won over by this strategy, at least partially. Before my days as an open revolutionary I was an active member of the New Democratic Party – for the unfamiliar, the NDP is Canada’s reformist social democratic party. When I attended anti-war or pro-labour demonstrations I always found myself in the company of Marxists, anarchists, Trotskyists, Marxist-Leninists and syndicalists. Had I not been so exposed to elements of the radical left, not to mention while they were working towards goals I truly believe in, I might never have embraced revolution.
I have wrangled lately with exactly how a United Front strategy could be infused into community socialist activism. As it stands, the only organization that explicitly advocates community socialism (the Canadian Community Socialist Organization, a group based almost entirely on Facebook) lacks anything solid in terms of an organizational structure, ties with other groups, or even a single campaign under its belt.
I have tried, thus far to little avail, to be part of building a solid CCSO. I won’t mince words: it is incredibly difficult. Not only is the CCSO introducing to the non-socialist public yet another form of a system that many (erroneously) conceive to have failed, it is introducing itself to those already identifying as “socialists” but whose alleigance belongs to the Communist Party, the Marxist-Leninist Party, Common Cause, the IWW, the New Democratic Party, Fightback, Socialist Action, etc.
I am not chauvinistically attached to community socialism: it is not an ideology of socialism that I claim is “superior” to any other. I have been fairly vocal since I began the project that community socialism is libertarian socialism that emphasizes community-based democracy, workers’ self-management of the workplace through democratic workers’ councils, and the abolition of all state-sponsored hinderances to personal liberty.
At it’s heart, community socialism is socialism itself, but so is every other movement that supports similar goals. As such, I don’t wish to see the assimilation of the pre-existing socialist movement into community socialism. Rather, I’d like to see community socialism build itself into a viable movement while at the same time working alongside – and never at odds with, when possible – fellow pro-working class, pro-democracy, pro-liberty forces.
It is my hope, however, that someday “socialism” can be interpreted to stand for what community socialism does, and that the people of the world will abandon all preconceptions that socialism stands for government tyranny and widespread poverty.
Until then, I call on all socialists to span across ideological lines. Community socialists: work with the communists, the anarachists, and the democratic socialists. Communists, anarchists and democratic socialists: we want to work with you. We want to overthrow capitalism. We want to destroy the bourgeois state.
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